Adventures in food, wine, and dinner parties

pairings

I don’t care who you are or where you’re from—everyone has strong food memories from childhood. Some of us think back fondly to summer ice cream cones by a lake. Some people can still taste Grandma’s lasagna or fried chicken. And for more than a few of us, the smell of chocolate chip cookies takes us right back to Mom’s kitchen.

What’s for dinner has always been a big topic of conversation and bonding for my family. When I was growing up, my mom made nearly everything our family ate, from bread to pickles and preserves to peanut butter. She grew herbs in the backyard and took me and my brother along to pick blueberries at the farms nearby. She taught me why you don’t eat tomatoes in December (unless you canned them, which we did) and why you should handle your bread dough as little as possible. And she was my co-conspirator for my very first dinner party—a Big Night-themed, six-course extravaganza for 12 of my friends in high school.

Those memories were the inspiration behind our April 11 menu. For this meal, each dish was a reimagined version of one of my earliest food memories (and in the case of the nuggets dish, memories of one of the foods I was forbidden to eat). My mom even flew in from Portland to help out! She’s an incredible baker, so all of the pastry and breads in the meal were her delicious handiwork.

Here’s the menu we presented. I grew up in Oregon, so the pairings all came from some of our favorite Oregon wineries and distilleries as well:

Saturday’s dinner is shaping up to be pretty epic—and if you’re the spontaneous type, you’re in luck! We’ve had some cancellations and we still have a few seats available. Email us now to make your reservation.

We’ll be pairing some of the world’s best sherries with each of our six tapas-inspired courses:

Boquerones, citrus, black olive

Sea bass crudo, Oro Blanco, radish, honey, paprika oil

Crispy sweetbreads, potato, braised pea shoots

Octopus, spring onion, blood orange, aioli

Short rib, savory caramel, slaw, black sesame

Cardamom duck egg ice cream sandwich

We learned an enormous amount at SherryFest West in Portland a few weeks ago, and we can’t wait take you on a guided tour of all the major sherry styles: fino, amontillado, palo cortado, oloroso, cream, and Pedro Ximenez. We’re planning to serve several wines that aren’t yet available in California, so this is a unique chance to try something rare and unusual—not to mention very, very delicious.

Good things come in barrels. (Obviously.) Therefore, something that comes from many, many barrels must be extra good, right? We went to Portland last week to investigate this theory at Sherryfest West 2013.

Sherry, which is a fortified wine made from palomino grapes in the Jerez region of Spain, sees an awful lot of barrel time when it’s aged in a solera system. A solera is a series of barrels where part of the wine in each barrel is regularly moved to the next stage (or criadera) and replenished with new, younger wine from the criadera before it. This constant partial movement means that by the time wine is drawn out of the last criadera for bottling, it is a mix of wine that is relatively young and wine that can be very, very old—more than 150 years in some of the oldest soleras. During this process, the wine can be aged biologically (under a layer of flavor-producing yeast called flor) and/or oxidatively, by simply leaving the barrels about one-sixth empty to expose the wine to oxygen.

A lot of Americans share an unfortunate cultural memory of sherry as a treacly, cloying after-dinner drink—and a few decades ago, most of what you could buy on the American market probably wasn’t very good. But actually, the vast majority of sherry is completely dry. These dry sherries pair smashingly well with food, providing a range of nutty, saline, and umami tones and occasionally surprising notes like butter toffee, black olive, orange peel, or baking spices. Continue reading →

Ah, the dog days of summer. What is it about later sunsets that makes us so decadently lazy? Every year it’s the same: Memorial Day rolls around and, like clockwork, we grill burgers five nights a week. Don’t get me wrong—I love burgers as much as the next girl—but if you venture past the culinary usual suspects, summer has so much more to offer.

Don’t miss these five quintessential summer experiences:

Drink fino sherry. Made from the Palomino grape in Spain and allowed to oxidize in a tiered system of barrels called a solera, sherry ranges from pale and light (fino) to dark and deeply nutty (oloroso). These wines are fortified and typically have between 15 and 22 percent alcohol. They age under a layer of yeast called flor, which gives them a unique woodsy characteristic. Refreshing fino sherries make a great aperitif on a warm night and—bonus!—go really well with summery food.

Pickle something. It’s not as difficult as you think. Mix one cup of vinegar with one cup of water, add half a cup of sugar and a quarter cup of kosher or sea salt, and heat in a saucepan until everything is dissolved. Fill a glass jar with some kind of amazing summer produce (yes, fruits work too—try cherries) and pour the pickling liquid in to cover them. Stick the jar in the fridge overnight. Eat the pickles within 3-4 days. Easy, right?

Make your own limoncello. This Italian liqueur, made from the lemons that weigh down the trees of the Amalfi Coast, is typically served after dinner as a digestif—but I like to use it as a base for grown-up lemonade too. To make your own, dissolve 1 3/4 cups of sugar in 2 1/2 cups water, add the zest of 10 lemons and a bottle of high-proof vodka, and steep the mixture in a clean glass bottle for 6 weeks. Then filter it a few times through a chinois or coffee filter, return it to the bottle, and keep in the freezer.

Grill a pizza. Get your grill as hot as possible. Roll your pizza dough out so it’s super-thin. Brush the grill grate with vegetable oil, then slide the round of dough onto the grate and cook for about 1 minute, then flip the crust over and cook for another minute, until the bottom of the crust is browned. Add your favorite toppings and warm the whole pizza on the grill. Pro tip: grilled pizza goes really well with a Bandol rosé.

Get crazy with your strawberries. It’s tough to improve on one of nature’s most perfect foods, but I know of two oddball ways to do it: macerate the berries in balsamic vinegar, or toss them with fresh basil. Or both. Seriously.

What do you love eating and drinking in the summer? Let me know in the comments!